The Paris climate targets are pushing research, industry and politics to find sustainable solutions for the future energy supply. In this context, hydrogen is seen as an important element, which can be produced without climate-damaging CO2-emissions by means of water electrolysis, as well as stored over longer periods of time. Therefore, many industrialized countries have elaborated hydrogen strategies which promote the expansion of electrolysis plants and the associated infrastructure. According to its national hydrogen strategy, for example, Germany wants to increase its installed electrolysis capacity to 5 GW by 2030 and establish hydrogen as an energy carrier.
Parallel to the trend of increasing importance of hydrogen as an energy carrier, there are still a large number of isolated regions in the world without access to electrical energy. Since a grid connection in these regions is associated with very high costs due to the remote location, self-sufficient energy systems are usually used. The double challenge of a climate-friendly and self-sufficient energy system can be met with the help of hydrogen.
Within the scope of this project, ILF Consulting Engineers GmbH together with the Chair of Plant and Process Engineering (TUM-APT) are investigating the application of hydrogen as an energy storage medium for self-sufficient energy supply with container systems. Based on the state of the art, corresponding concepts are developed and compared. Taking into account relevant system requirements, process and energy modeling is performed for selected energy system configurations. In addition, the comparison to conventional stand-alone energy systems is made with respect to system capacity, storage capacity and economic efficiency. An initial analysis to narrow down the power or storage sizes of the system was recently published at the GPPS conference (GPPS-TC-2021_paper_209.pdf).
If you have any questions about the project, please contact Tin Jurisic (tin.jurisic@tum.de).